6 ways to help your child engage in prayer meetings!

Aron Adalian   -   March 21, 2023

6 ways to help your child engage in prayer meetings!

As we prepare for celebrating Resurrection Sunday, our church will be hosting Thursday Night Prayer Meetings leading up to our Maundy Thursday service, March 6th. During prayer meeting families are invited to participate in a time devoted to prayer and fasting.  Our prayer meeting is an intergenerational service in which the entire family attends together and we encourage you to BRING YOUR CHILDREN. Children benefit from participating in prayer meeting!  Children get to see their greatest spiritual influencers (their parents) go before the creator, acknowledging their total reliance on God as they engage in a spiritual communication that will mark the rest of their life as a believer.  To help our families be intentional as they lead their children in prayer meeting below are six ways to help your children engage.

  1. Prepare your Heart
    • Come ready to participate in the prayer meeting.  Share with your children the importance of praying as a people of God and what a privilege it is to meet up to pray together.  Say something like this, “We get to pray together with our church family today!  God does amazing things when the saints, God’s people, pray!  Revelation 8:3-5 shows us that the prayers of all the saints are gathered in the heavenly places and are poured out together to accomplish God’s great purposes.  How cool is that?
  2. Sing and Celebrate God Truths During Times of Music
    • As you sing the words of Worship share with your children why the words are meaningful, and what they make you feel towards God.  Do this during pauses and go back to singing and participating in worship.  Consider asking children what truths they like in the song and how the song makes them feel.
  3. Help interpret church language to kids.
    • As the pastor leads the church through the different elements of prayer, help children to engage in the prayer times by sharing with them what the church is praying for during each time.
    • Example: We use our finger prayer to explain the 5 parts of a prayer.Adoration – I love you, God. (Thumb)
      Thanksgiving – I thank you, God. (Index finger)
      Confession – I’m sorry, God. (Middle Finger)
      Intercession – Help others, God. (Ring Finger)
      Petition or Supplication – Help me, God. (Pinkie Finger)
  4. Work at Worship and Prayer
    • Saying to your children that prayer is important is one thing, but children learn that prayer is vital and necessary when they see their parents make it a priority.  Work to engage and participate.
    • “We are often so caught up in our activities that we tend to worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship. – Charles R. Swindoll”
  5. Remember, picking up new disciplines take time.
    • Have realistic expectations in your own prayer and worship ability, as well as your family’s.  Don’t feel the need to look like some sort of professional prayer meeting attender.  (Matthew 6:5-8) Instead, commit yourself to growing in the skill of prayer.
  6. BE PATIENT, SHOW GRACE, AND HELP CHILDREN FIGHT DISTRACTIONS.
    • In some prayer meetings, I have watched as my son was engaged and devoted to prayer.  We sang and prayed as brothers in Christ coming before our Lord.  Other prayer meeting times the hot mess express would pull into station, and I was sure that he was paying little to no attention.  After one such session in which it seemed like my son spent the night fasting from prayer itself, he turned to me and asked me about several of the people that we laid hands on and prayed over together.  He then mentioned them by name later in our family prayer time.